Everything We Wrote in January 2018

We managed a slightly slim 17 posts last month what with the lingering effects of the Christmas break and a cheeky holiday towards the end. Still, there were a few good ‘uns you might have missed in the January fog.

We kicked the month off, as usual, with a contribution to the Session. January’s edition was a bit weird because there was no host until the last minute when co-founder Jay Brooks stepped in to ask ‘Three Questions’. His round-up of all the responses is here.

We went to Cardiff which prompted Keith Flett to ask us a question: “Why Drink Brains?” We answered.

Reader Robin Oldfield urged us to watch a 1979 documentary about caving in Yorkshire. It didn’t sound promising but, oh, how we’re glad we gave it a go. (Feedback since suggests that actually was a pretty typical night in that particular pub, contrary to our assumption.)

Our local had Bass on but the landlord wasn’t sure how to describe its origins which made us ask, Where is Bass From? Stan Hieronymus had some thoughts and we Tweeted this as a follow-up:

Imagine owning the rights to a brand as universal as Bass and doing nothing but the bare minimum with it. Imagine owning the rights to Boddington's, *the* cult Manchester bitter, and not being arsed to produce or market a cask version. AB-InBev is daft. pic.twitter.com/E6gSMR6C93

We put together a reading list on the subject of lager, pointing to portions of books and articles we’d like to see in an anthology. Alan McLeod had some follow-up thoughts here. (We hope people copy this idea — we’d love to see similar lists on all sorts of beer- and pub-related subjects, and we’ll even design covers for them if you like.)

Via our ever-growing collection of old in-house magazines from breweries we shone a spotlight on a significant post-war pub, The White Knight in Crawley, West Sussex. Some Twitter chat ensued, leading us to more (and better) pictures.

Drawing from the same well we put together a piece on a forgotten example of a largely forgotten trend: Rigby’s Bier Keller in Liverpool. Our favourite detail here is that the landlord was a German former prisoner of war.

We also managed eight exclusive posts for Patreon subscribers including a proper good one on Humphrey Smith, the brewing world’s answer to Scott Walker or Howard Hughes. If you like the sound of that, and want to encourage us to keep doing stuff like the above, do consider signing up.